SSD RAID TRIM now on Intel 7-Series Chipsets

Hardcoreware takes a look at the new RST drivers with enabled TRIM support

It seems like we’ve been waiting forever for this, but it’s finally here. Intel has added SSD TRIM capability to RAID arrays with the latest version of their RST drivers (11 and up) to 7-series motherboards. TRIM is important because without it, data that is deleted wouldn’t be freed up for use again until the drive is at a fully used state.

TRIM works with the OS to find deleted data (in Windows, this would be data that has been deleted from the recycle bin, or force-deleted, or a freshly formatted drive) and zero the flash, making it ‘good as new’. This must be supported by the SSD, firmware, OS, and drivers for everything to work. This is separate from idle garbage collection that some drives have.

Until now, this feature was not available in Intel’s storage drivers when SSDs are used in RAID mode. SSD TRIM was only offered to single drives.